A Revitalization of Revolutionary Love: A Dialogue between Martin Luther King and Kim Chi-Ha

Abstract This essay investigates the power and limits of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s theology of revolutionary love through a dialogue with Kim Chi-Ha. I will argue that King’s theology of revolutionary love may be revitalized within a globalized context through a dialogue with Kim’s philosophy of dan, that includes an “agonized violence of love”, in order to offer a continuing praxis of love of enemy and love of neighbor, salvation for sinner and sinned-against. I show how in King’s theology, love subsists in justice and then how it is illustrated by and is challenged by the grotesque image at the conclusion of Kim’s poem, Chang Il-Dam—a mutual beheading in which the heads of the sinner and sinned-against are switched in a new creation. I argue this because Kim envisions this violence as eschatological and salvific, leading to social transformation also based upon a kind of revolutionary love. As the global influence of King’s theology continues to be studied, this particular dialogue shows how King’s theology of nonviolent revolutionary love, as a “global flow”, can be revitalized to highlight the costliness of justice and the nonviolent transformative nature of love that are embedded in salvation for sinned-against and sinner, oppressed and oppressor.

There is perhaps no more difficult theological praxis than loving one's enemy and doing so within a social context of oppression and innocent suffering.2 In particular, the Christian praxis of love of enemy is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and maligned of all Christian teachings. On the one hand, it can provide an overly-sentimental understanding that is a change in the emotional relationship between opponents. On the other hand, it can be the cover by which the oppressed continue to be subjugated by substituting an amorphous, and perhaps harmful, love of oppressor in the place of structural change that will lead to justice. King encapsulated this tension early in his career and pointed out that justice and international affairs as they were with their own survival and possible flourishing during Park's aggressive modernization plans. The Park regime constituted the primary target of Kim's political writings whereas the intertwined evils of American white supremacy, militarism, and unfettered capitalism were King's main targets. Like King, Kim was imprisoned on several occasions and wrote from prison and about the meaning of imprisonment. Unlike King, Kim was arrested by the KCIA, Park's secret police, tortured, received a death sentence for his anti-regime writings, and later had the sentence commuted to life in prison due to the outcry of the international community.6 He was released from prison for good after Park's assassination in 1979.7 In addition, the plight of Koreans was not an explicit part of King's global vision8 and in Kim's writings available in English, he mentions thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, James Cone, and Paolo Freire, but he does not mention King. At the same time, it is difficult to claim that King's life and work had no influence on Kim. King is a monumental thinker whose global reach only recently has been studied in depth.9 Therefore, I suggest that an adequate heuristic for envisioning this connection is that King's theology of revolutionary love is saturated into the discourses carried by globalization and thus influenced Kim as a "global theological flow."10 Robert J. Schreiter points out that the term "flow" arose from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and communication studies. A flow denotes "…a circulation of information that is patently visible yet hard to define. Flows move across geographic and other cultural boundaries, and, like a river, define a route, change the landscape, and leave behind sediment and silt that enrich the local ecology" such as Paul Gilroy's concept of "The Black Atlantic."11 To explain how a flow moves from cultural to becoming also theological, it is helpful to quote Schreiter at length: Global theological flows, then, are theological discourses that, while not uniform or systemic, represent a series of linked, mutually intelligible discourses that address the contradictions and failures of global systems. They are theological discourses, that is, they speak out of the realm of religious beliefs and practices. They are not uniform or systemic, because of their specific cultural and social settings. Yet, they are intelligible discourses in other cultural and social settings that are experiencing the same failure of global systems and who are raising the same kind of protest.12 A precondition for the emergence of a "flow" is what has become known as the "glocal"; that is, the interaction where the local cultures adopt and reconstruct aspects of the global and when the global feels the need to tailor its offerings to the particularities of the local.13 In terms of theological reflection, as well 6 It can also be said with confidence that King's life was influenced by the violent physical, psychological, and spiritual terrorism of white racists and the F.B.I. under J. Edgar Hoover, among others. 7 Around 1989, the end of the Cold War, Kim began to turn his back on Roman Catholicism and Christianity. This is because he began to think that it was little more than a Western neocolonial import that was harmful to traditional Korean culture and religion. See Küster,A Protestant Theology of Passion,148 n. 46. In addition, as Wu points out, Kim's poetry then takes an "inward" turn away from politics and towards the ecological context and employs elements of Buddhism and Shamanism. Wu, "Introduction", 15-33. Kim also begins to develop a philosophy of salim (bringing to life) and this is discussed in Kim and Kenzaburo, "An Autonomous Subject." For a critique of Kim's post-1989 change as abandoning the need for political and social change, see Suh Kyung-Sik, "A Letter to Mr. Kim Chi-ha." 8 This is not to say that Korea was excluded from King's vision, rather, that, unlike Ghana, South Africa, and other countries, King had not visited and did not name Korea as a specific concern. 9 See, for example, Baldwin, Toward the Beloved Community; Baldwin and Dekar, In an Inescapable Network of Mutuality; Lee, The Great World House. 10 For the purposes of this essay, the term "globalization" refers to the emerging social, economic, political and cultural confluence of modernity, neoliberal capitalism, Western democracy and postmodern consumerism that continues to penetrate and refashion the entirety of the world's cultures. In a more precise understanding of this term, Robert Schreiter observes that a set definition of it remains contested but that a base-line definition upon which most scholars agree is: "the increasingly interconnected character of the political, economic, and social life of the peoples on this planet." See Schreiter, The New Catholicity, 4-5. Schreiter goes on to observe that the phenomenon of globalization can be interpreted as beginning in the later decades of the 20 th century or with European colonization in the late 15 th century. Concurring with Schreiter, I too will use the understanding of globalization as beginning in the second half of the 20 th century, the heights of the careers of King and Kim. 11 Schreiter,The New Catholicity,15. 12 Ibid., 16. Italics added. 13 Ibid., 12.

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Download Date | 10/25/19 12:18 AM as in production of culture, this context of the glocal-the sometimes violent and often unequal interaction and encounter between the global and the local-has become the basic venue in which humankind finds itself.14 The glocal has connected disparate sections of the world in shared theological concerns, or "global theological flows." 15 Here, I suggest that King's work be understood as a global theological flow and recent work by King scholars adds credence to my claim. First, Lewis V. Baldwin has indicated that the current phase in King scholarship is focused upon his influence within the context of globalization. Although King's life and work occurred well before the development of globalization theories, Baldwin has convincingly argued that an underlying thread in King's thought is his understanding of a "world house", or a global "beloved community".16 As an early version of a "global theological flow", King's thought has influenced the local, philosophical ecosystems of many nations and peoples even if that influence remains implicit. As Hak-Joon Lee points out, "One finds in King one of the most articulate, persuasive spokespersons for global ethics, and a visionary for global community who greatly contributed to the global currency of many of these values and norms."17 Moreover, Lee argues that a global Kingian ethic be understood in the 21 st century as one located in "glocality"; the multitudes of locations where the global systems and the local systems meet, are interpreted and are negotiated.18 Having provided an adequate heuristic for envisioning this conversation, King's work as "global theological flow", I now turn to the work of King.

Love Subsisting in Justice: King's Theology of Revolutionary Love
A sea of ink has been spilled discussing the biography, theology, ethics, intellectual influences, cultural significance, and religious background of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. since his assassination in 1968. In the almost fifty ensuing years, he and his theology have been elevated almost to the level of hagiography by those who have not taken the time to study the true King underneath the cultural accretions.19 In this section, I do not intend to offer a new interpretation of King's own work. Rather, I intend merely to highlight and clarify King's theology of revolutionary love as love subsisting in justice by examining several documents across different phases in King's career.
Although King's intellectual development and praxis are too complex to fit neatly into any one schema, for the sake of clarity I adopt one offered by James H. Cone and David Garrow both of whom employ a hermeneutics of suspicion towards white interpretations of King's work. Cone provides an overarching narrative and Garrow the critical hermeneutics.20 During the time of King's adult career (1955King's adult career ( -1968, Cone describes King's development as moving from an optimistic integrationist to a temporary separatist; from a social reformer to a militant nonviolent revolutionary; from an intellectual dependence on classical western philosophy to a call for the study of black philosophers…from his inspiring 'I Have a Dream' oration to his despairing assertion that 'the dream I had in Washington in 1963 has often turned into a nightmare…'21  King,Jr.,and Cone,Martin,Malcolm,and America. 20 I am assuming the relative adequacy of James Cone's and David Garrow's hermeneutics of suspicion towards white interpreters of King's work, like myself, in my choice of these documents. However, the hermeneutical position I am adopting from Cone and Garrow is from 1986 and thus is somewhat outdated in the current academic debates on King, although I have not found evidence to invalidate their position. In addition, Cone's and Garrow's hermeneutics of suspicion are helpful in avoiding the continued danger of domesticating and sanitizing King. Having taught King's thought to undergraduates for many years, King's life and legacy remain overly domesticated and sanitized in many, if not most, of the minds of my students. 21 Ibid., 30. Cone also highlights that justice should be understood as the guiding principle of King's work as opposed to love.22 They coexist, but Cone thinks that emphasizing love over justice leads to a sanitized, fictional King created by the white imagination seeking comfort as opposed to social change.23 David J. Garrow offers an analysis that is more strictly focused upon King's intellectual development that is of use for the hermeneutical task of approaching King's theology.24 Garrow argues that the most dependable analysis of King's work must be based upon the large number of (until recently) unpublished sermons and speeches that provides a more adequate portrait of King. Garrow does not think that King's more popular published works are unhelpful, although he explicitly warns against two particular publications;25 rather, he thinks that in order to adequately interpret King's work one must approach him in this manner. Garrow takes this position because he argues that much of King's published work was often revised and edited by advisors or even sometimes fully ghost-written by them without King's review.26 These works are helpful for providing insight into the collective movement that King represented and acted as the voice but are less helpful for an attempt to exegete the theology and praxis of King himself. Therefore I will utilize works from different periods within King's career that fit within this hermeneutic, namely: "Address to the First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting" (1955),27 "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" (1963), "Address at the Freedom Rally in Cobo Hall" (1963) and "Where Do We Go From Here?" (1967). Of these, I assign the most importance to King's 1955 address and assume its theological functioning in interpreting the others. Here, in his address orated at the outset of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, King offered an image of love subsisting in justice. Near the conclusion of the speech, King provides a fundamental theology of revolutionary love based in this relationship: "But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love."28 This is a justice that King roots in the Living God who is active in human history and who punishes political entities that refuse to participate in God's justice for the poor and the oppressed.29 As King states, "Standing beside love is always justice, and we are only using the tools of justice. Not only are we using the tools of persuasion, but we've come to see that we've got to use the tools of coercion."30 This shows that King's theology of love could only be understood with respect to justice. For King, love was a Christian ideal that he contextualized to be the means for pursuing justice for the oppressed. It was not yet an allencompassing nonviolent love even though King was no advocate of violence.31 Rather, this love was the 22 Ibid., 29-31. 23 King's words in 1967 also reflect this dilemma: "Now what has happened is that we've had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience…It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times." King, "Where do we go from here?", 186-187. 24 For the standard schema of King's development, see Smith and Zepp's excellent work, Search for the Beloved Community. 25 Garrow argues that the works "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" and Why We Can't Wait should only be employed with the greatest of caution when understanding King. See "The Intellectual Development of Martin Luther King, Jr.", 17 n.1. 26 Ibid., 5, 14. 27 See King's Stride Toward Freedom,[430][431][432][433][434][435][436][437][438], for a contextual account of the time in which he gave this speech. 28 King, "MIA Mass Meeting", 11. 29 As King states, the God of Israel is One who does not merely say "I love you." Rather, King declares, "...God…stands up before the nations and said: 'Be still and know that I'm God, that if you don't obey me I will break the backbone of your power and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.' Standing beside love is always justice." Ibid., 11-12. 30 Ibid., page 12. Italics added. 31 Garrow points out that until the middle days of the Montgomery bus boycott, King attempted to buy a gun for the selfdefense of his family and at one point had a gun in his home. Garrow, "Intellectual Development", 10-11. This is not at odds with Gandhi's praxis of nonviolence that also is not fully consistent in itself. See his provisional acceptance of situational violence in Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers, 88-89.

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Download Date | 10/25/19 12:18 AM beginning of a public spirituality32 and a tactic for shrewdly participating in God's saving action in the world. As King indicates, the protesters of Montgomery will not inflict violence upon their white oppressors even though they have had much violence inflicted upon them. They will settle for nothing less than justice, but they will accomplish this without perpetrating violence. Their action is guided by a political love. King observes, "…I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that…We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all."33 Cone highlights this section of King's speech. He remarks, "Even as King urged blacks to keep 'God in the forefront,' his emphasis remained on justice and not love, coercion and not persuasion"34 and Garrow agrees with this assertion.35 Here, King shows that an isolated theology of love is not sufficient in order to understand the action in which the protesters are engaged. Rather, it is a theology of love subsisting in justice that includes divine judgment and a political love as a means to this end. 36 King continued to employ this idea of revolutionary love, love subsisting in justice, throughout his career. It is his foundation for nonviolent direct action discussed in "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", where King tactically explains how love is embodied and manifest in the nonviolent movement.37 It also is King's foundation for explaining nonviolence as revolutionary love in Detroit. King  The tactic or means by which to attain those ends is a kind of political love, one always oriented towards justice. Even though the white oppressors mainly understood the "language of the gun", a phrase used by Malcolm X40, King was convinced that the oppressed cannot achieve liberation through speaking this language of the oppressor. Rather, King advocated and practiced the language of nonviolent resistance, a language meant to pre-empt and ultimately dismantle the oppressor's very ability to speak the language of the gun. For King, militant nonviolent resistance was a form of agape-love. It could lead to the conversion and transformation of the white oppressor from serving an idol of death and inflicting harm upon the Black 32 Weaver writes, "For King, a proper spirituality meant that the inner piety of prayer was always accompanied by the outer piety of social action: 'pray for racial justice but use minds to develop a program . . . pray for economic justice, but make social changes that make for a better distribution of wealth.' King never claimed a privileged relationship that set him above others in the Civil Rights Movement; rather, he believed that God's presence was experienced through the movement. A life of prayer was practicing the presence of God in the fight for justice…" Weaver, "The Spirituality of Martin Luther King, Jr.", 59. See also Baldwin, Never to Leave Us Alone. King's is similar to the Roman Catholic idea of discipleship to Christ as both mystical and political. For two helpful explanations of this Catholic understanding, see Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, and Metz, A Passion for God. 33 Ibid., 9. 34 Cone, "Theology of Martin Luther King", 31. Cone argues that King's change from a focus on justice to a focus on love was due to the increased involvement of his editors and advisors in his work. Ibid., 32. 35 Garrow, "Intellectual Development", 16. 36 Garrow demonstrates that King's thought was influenced by the dialectical strategy of G.W.F. Hegel and the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. The relationship between love and justice seems to include each of these elements. See Garrow, "Intellectual Development", 11-14. 37 King, "Letter", 290-291. King's understanding of nonviolence as within justice and love becomes clear in King's description of the four phases of any campaign for nonviolent action. These include: contextual analysis to uncover any injustice, negotiation with the political powers for change, self-purification and spiritual preparation for action if negotiations fail, and the direct action itself that must remain nonviolent. These four steps demonstrate a similar sensibility to King's 1955 address with regard to love subsisting in justice. The overarching aim of these steps is the real achievement of justice for the oppressed in the here and now but using the morally "most excellent" method possible. 38 King, "Cobo Hall", 66. 39 Ibid. 40 Malcolm X, "With Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer", 106-108. community to serving the God of Life and becoming an ally in the fight against white supremacy. The goal was political and social revolution through transformation and rehabilitation as opposed to elimination and replacement. It was love subsisting in justice.
In King's 1967 speech before the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "Where Do We Go From Here?", King's theology of revolutionary love, love subsisting in justice, continues to sharpen. His theology and rhetoric parallel that of the 1955 "MIA Mass Meeting" while also being informed by his reflections on praxis in his "Letter" and his triumphs and defeats in the ongoing nonviolent movement. After discussing direct actions such as Operation Breadbasket, he moves to the non-negotiable importance of revolutionary love. He declares to the SCLC attendees: Now we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best…is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.41 In sum, Martin Luther King, Jr., the foremost Christian theologian, interpreter and practitioner of militant nonviolence in the 20 th century, placed revolutionary love-love subsisting in justice and connected to the Greek term agape-at the core of his life and work. For King, agape was love of all humankind, oppressors and oppressed, because God loves them.42 King thinks it is a form of participation in God's work of fragmentary salvation. If not conclusive, I believe that my brief analysis of selected works from King's large oeuvre provides enough evidence to make this claim plausible. I now move on to place King's theology of revolutionary love, as a global theological flow, into dialogue with Kim.

Kim Chi-Ha: Advocate of the Minjung, Priest of Han
Korean Catholic poet and political dissident, Kim Chi-Ha, most likely is an unfamiliar figure to students of King's life, thought, and global influence. At the height of Kim's international fame, he was nominated for the Nobel Prizes in Peace and in Literature, was the recipient of the Lotus Prize, and was named an international "prisoner of conscience." Consequently, Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan characterized Kim as a "Catholic resister ... who so clearly embodies the healing, the heroism, the chutzpah, the lyrical and tragic, the mask of grotesquerie-and perhaps most important of all, the spinal courage, the articulated, stalking, indomitable no which today is the chief ingredient of that vocation. Quite a human. Quite a Christian."43 Kim Chi-Ha's (b. 1941)44 context was the minjung45 revival in South Korea in the 20 th century and his international fame reached its zenith in the 1970s. The word minjung (民衆) consists of two Chinese characters, min meaning people and jung meaning the masses. David Kwang-sun Suh remarks that the term minjung, although essentially untranslatable, points to those who have been "politically oppressed, economically exploited and culturally alienated."46 This revival was the 20 th century continuation of a centuries-old struggle of the Korean masses against the rich Korean minority in power. Kim, along with many other writers, artists, students, and activists, was part and parcel of the modern minjung movement and helped to articulate its primary concerns and goals: the liberation of the minjung from their han. 41 King, "Where do we go from here?", 186. 42 For an early articulation of love, and in particular King's distinction between eros, philia, and agape, see King's 1957 sermon, "Loving Your Enemies." King later develops this philosophy to more explicitly show and demand a robust social and political dimension, or political love, but it is more implicit, rather than absent from this early sermon. Also see Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, for the classic treatment of love of enemy that undergirded King's thought. 43 Berrigan, "From a Korean Prison", 16. 44 A much more extensive discussion of Kim and his theology is found in Considine, "Kim Chi-Ha's Han Anthropology". Some of this section is a reworking of that article. 45 In this essay, I employ the Revised Romanization of Korean into English rather than the McCune-Reischauer system whenever possible. 46 Suh quoted in Küster, A Protestant Theology of Passion, xii-xiii.

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Download Date | 10/25/19 12:18 AM Kim's own focus was the resolution of the han of the people. In short, han (恨) is a cultural anthropology that refers to a deep woundedness, a "black hole in the soul" that is the consequence of being sinned-against. Andrew Sung Park describes han variously as "frustrated hope", "collapsed feeling of pain", "resentful feeling of bitterness", and "the division of the tissue of the heart caused by abuse, exploitation, and violence…"47 Wang-Sang Han provides a sharp, visceral description, "Han is a sense of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of overwhelming odds against one's feeling of total abandonment, a feeling of acute pain and sorrow in one's guts and bowels"48 and Chung Hyun-Kyung points out that women's collective han is the most prevalent, most severe, and often overlooked.49 To these descriptions of han, theologian Suh Nam-Dong describes a particular socio-political "fourfold dimension" to han that was formed through the unfolding of Korean history: colonization and invasion by regional powers such as China, Japan, and Mongolia that threatened the very existence of the Korean people; the tyrannical rulers who inflicted great suffering upon the Korean people; neo-Confucianism's strict subordination and oppression of women, so that "the existence of women was han itself"; and the overwhelming number of Korean peasants who were officially registered as hereditary slaves and thus treated as government property throughout Korean history.50 Reflecting upon this long history, Korean Quaker writer and activist, Ham Sok-Hon, observes that Korea's history can be called a "Queen of Suffering." Ham writes, "This land, this people, events big and small, its politics and religion, its art and thought-all that is Korean bespeaks suffering. It is a fact, however shameful and painful."51 Kim places himself within this context of han and once described himself as a Shamanistic "priest of han." Kim thinks han is the minjung's experience of oppression that also carries the energy for social transformation. Kim writes that "accumulated han is inherited and transmitted, boiling in the blood of the people", and possesses "the emotional core of anti-regime action."52 Kim also emphasizes the intense negativity of han, for, as Wonhee Anne Joh points out, han is never innocent.53 Its deep negativity cannot be underestimated, and one of Kim's sharpest descriptions of han is "a people-eating monster."54 For him, han is a "ghostly creature" that "appears as a concrete substance with enormous ugly and evil energy."55 The problem of han is at the core of Kim's work before 1989.56  Korea, was a response to the influence of Western, especially Catholic learning (called sohak) and encompassed aspects of Shamanism, Buddhism, Daoism, and perhaps, interestingly enough, Christianity. In Kim's work, he retrieves the importance of the Donghak peasants' rebellion (1894-95) and its founder's claim that "humanity is heaven." The importance of this awakening-what African-American philosophers might call a realization of "somebodiness" as opposed to "nobodiness"cannot be overstated. The vast majority of the population of Korea were poor, landless peasants from before the Three Kingdoms period (892-936), through Goryeo (936-1392) and remained as such through the Joseon Dynasty  and into the Japanese invasion and occupation of Korea (1910Korea ( -1945. A similar oppression of the poor majority continued into the late 20 th century. This period in South Korea was defined by the military dictatorships of Park Chung-Hee (1961-1979 and Chun Doo-Hwan (1979-1988.

The Story of Chang Il-Dam
It is within this culture and context, and often while in prison, that Kim Chi-Ha envisioned a story entitled Chang Il-Dam. Kim's notes57 shows that Chang, the title character, is a han-filled person through personal lineage and socio-political circumstance. Chang overcomes his han through a religious experience of enlightenment that is a "'complete conformity with the han of abyss.' This refers to his experience of becoming one with those who are cursed and expelled by society, such as robbers, murderers, defrauders, etc."58 This conformity with han occurs while Chang encounters a prostitute in labor with a child and Chang becomes a kind of messianic figure who struggles for the salvation and liberation of the poor and despised of South Korea. He comes to the realization that "humanity is heaven", gathers disciples, and retreats into the mountains to teach them a mystical-political praxis for salvation and liberation of those who suffer. They make a triumphant return into Seoul and proclaim liberation and salvation for the oppressed masses of women and men and thus make enemies of the rich and powerful. Chang soon is betrayed by one of his disciples, is arrested, tried, and executed. Three days he later rises from the dead and it is here that the story takes a surprising and grotesque turn. The Risen Chang beheads his betrayer, and himself, and then places his head on the neck of the betrayer. They are now fused into something new, albeit grotesque, that embodies and proclaims salvation and liberation. A new creation has emerged and Kim thinks that this is a symbol of salvation for sinner and sinned-against. An act of calculated, eschatological violence was necessary in order for this salvation to come about and be revealed to others. This is what Kim calls an "agonized violence of love" through a practice of dan. It is based in what Kim calls "the unity of God and revolution", or, "humanity is heaven."

Exegesis: Dan and Chang Il-Dam
Chang Il-Dam, and its agonized violence of love, is a story not of violent retribution but rather a strange kind of love and salvation for the oppressor based upon a practice of dan. It shows justice subsisting in love, however, both love and justice may include limited violence through an interplay between Donghak and Christianity. Like the founder of Donghak, Confucian scholar Choe Je-u, Chang has the revelation that "humanity is heaven" and that all human beings are of the divine. Like Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed Messiah and God's own Son by Christians, Chang encounters God most robustly among those deemed "unclean"; those saturated with han through being sinned-against. Suh Nam-Dong observes that Chang "…arrives at the deep realization of the truth of new life (God) comes into the filthy cesspools of humanity."59 Like each figure, Chang begins to preach immanent salvation and liberation to the people and gathers disciples. Differing from these figures, however, Chang teaches them the practice called dan. As Kim explains, dan is a remedy to han. It is the cutting off of han in order to break the vicious cycles of suffering, revenge, and unjust violence it perpetuates. Dan is akin to a necessary amputation of a gangrenous limb in order to save the rest of the body from infection and death. Kim thinks that this practice includes the confluence of personal asceticism, detachment from the world, and a purified re-engagement with the world for the purpose of social transformation. Kim writes, "Dan is to overcome han. Personally, it is self-57 The text of the poem itself, Chang Il-Dam, has been lost. It was confiscated by the Park dictatorship when Kim was arrested in 1974. He never attempted to reproduce the poem but has published references and notes. There are conflicting accounts of the character of Chang and of the plot and I have attempted to synthesize some of the commonalities among them. The sources upon which I rely include Suh's essays: "Missio Dei and Two Stories in Confluence", "Towards a Theology of Han", and "Historical References for a Theology of Minjung." In addition, I use Kim's "Declaration of Conscience." Kim's Declaration, however, was actually penned by his friend, Park Young-nae. Küster,A Protestant Theology of Passion,81 n.11. This is a similarity between Kim and King; neither was directly responsible for everything attributed to his name. For some works, each acted as a kind of editor-in-chief rather than author, per se. 58 Suh, "Missio Dei", 65. 59 Ibid., 65. denial. Collectively, it is to cut the vicious circle of revenge."60 Here, it is helpful to quote Kim at length in his explanation of dan: to cut all adherence to the secular world in order that one may be for the revolution of the secular world. It is to sever the link which permits circulation. There is a terrible accumulation of han which will burn in endless hate, massacre, revenge, and destruction. Therefore we need the repeated cutting which stops the vicious circular explosion and sublimates it to a higher spiritual power.61 Through dan, Kim hopes that good will triumph over evil and the oppressed will be liberated because God and revolution are intertwined.62 Through a practice of dan, Kim thinks that despite han's intense negativity, it can be sublimated and channeled to foster healing, justice, and peace. Chang Il-Dam shows that the philosophy of dan entails both a commitment to nonviolent resistance while also accepting the possibility of resorting to an "agonized violence of love." Although not ideal, it may be a pragmatic necessity in order to foster salvation and liberation.63 To this end, Kim writes, "I reject dehumanizing violence and accept the violence that restores human dignity. It could justly be called a violence of love."64 Kim continues, "I welcome the violence of love, yet I am also an ally of true nonviolence. The revolution I would support would be a synthesis of true nonviolence and an agonized violence of love."65 Chang's resurrection embodies an "agonized violence of love" due to the fusion of victim and victimizer into new creations. The limited, agonized violence and cutting of dan, for Kim, is necessary in order for these new, reconciled persons to arise. They are a product of dan, have been fully separated from the cycle of han, and by their very embodied existence transform its negative energy into positive energy that can foster healing, liberation, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Kim's resurrection image of Chang shows one possibility of han being resolved through dan.66 As Suh observes, "This peculiar combination of the body of the evil man and the head of truth indicates that Kim Chi-Ha thought that even the most wicked villain will be saved in the end. Through the carrier that is the body of the evil man, Chang Il-Dam's good news of liberation, like a wild and stormy wind, goes everywhere."67 Dialogue: Violence, Justice, and Love Kim's story, Chang Il-Dam, with its undergirding philosophy of dan and an "agonized violence of love" presents a challenge to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s theology of revolutionary love. On the one hand, Kim and King both look to a new creation, a glimpse of realized eschatology, as embodying and proclaiming God's salvation that is already present but not yet in its fullness. It is God's work that calls for human participation, is indeed a new creation, and is inextricably linked to love, and in particular love of enemy, subsisting within justice. On the other hand, Kim's philosophy of a new creation through a practice of dan, which includes an agonized violence of love, is incommensurate with King's theology of revolutionary love in which the new creation is realized through militant nonviolence. For his part, Kim endorsed and practiced militant nonviolent resistance, however, he also was convinced that small acts of violence may be necessary and redemptive. Although later in his career King was shaken by the breadth and depth of white racism,68 King never abandoned his conviction that nonviolent resistance, a revolutionary love rooted in justice, was the only way to fully participate in God's work of justice and liberation. Hence, for King even an agonized violence of love ultimately would be unacceptable.
Also, it is difficult to imagine King using such grotesque imagery as Kim to discuss the radical revolution needed to achieve the "beloved community" and "world house." If we recontextualize and re-imagine Kim's protagonist, Chang, as a Black messianic figure rooted both in African traditions and African-American Christianity who proclaims salvation and liberation to oppressed Blacks, his betrayal by perhaps a white disciple, eventual execution, and then Resurrection narrative in which he decapitates his white betrayer and exchanges heads with him, would be unlikely to have the same meaning as in its Korean context. A deeper, semiotic analysis would show that the meaning changes significantly as it moves from one culture to another.69 Nevertheless, Kim's imagery may be closer to King's theology of love than it initially appears and may revitalize aspects of King's theology that have become dormant: the cost of justice and an insistence on nonviolent transformational love. Chang's agonized violence of love is an act of eschatological violence both to himself and his enemy. It is a strange image of a reconciliation based in Jesus Christ's Resurrection, interpreted through Shamanism and Donghak. Oppressor and oppressed are irrevocably fused together in a new creation, albeit grotesque. The point is for the sinned-against to become one flesh with the sinner. Kim's image is one of reconciliation, not retaliation. If it were mere eschatological vengeance, the traitor would remain dead and humiliated. But this is not the case. For, as Kim writes, "It is an expression of Chang's conflicting thought that this is revenge but at the same time also the salvation of vicious men."70 Or, as Suh observes, "the head speaking justice and truth is bonded to the body carrying injustice and falsehood…"71 Kim creates an image that conveys a similar outcome to that for which King struggled: conversion of one's enemy into an ally in the fight for justice. The painful violence represents the cost of justice and the new creation the transformative power of love that gives life.

A Revitalized Revolutionary Love
In sum, King and Kim agree that love must subsist in justice and that justice includes salvation for both sinned-against and sinner. The goal for both thinkers is a realization of God's new creation, albeit fragmentary, in a "beloved community" or fusion of sinner and sinned-against. Although Kim's philosophy of dan ultimately may be incommensurate with King's theology of revolutionary love, Kim's grotesque 68 As Cone describes: "Hope was carved out of the suffering and disappointments [King] experienced in fighting injustice in urban ghettos (especially Chicago), in dialoguing with black power advocates, and in taking his stand against the war in Vietnam. He placed love and justice in an eschatological context, with an emphasis on bearing witness to God's coming freedom by taking a stand for justice now, even though the odds against its establishment are great." Cone, "Theology", 30. image of betrayed and betrayer becoming one flesh contains a surplus of meaning that, when in dialogue with King's theology of revolutionary love, highlight and revitalize King's theology within a global context. Kim's shocking, eschatological image reminds a society that justice and reconciliation among sinners and sinned-against, oppressors and oppressed, is costly. Justice requires pain and sacrifice from the oppressors (Chang's betrayer) but love directs the praxis as transformation towards new life and not mere vengeance or death (new creation of Chang and his betrayer). As King wrote in his posthumously-published essay, "A Testament of Hope", "White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo. "72 In this way, through highlighting King's theology and praxis of a costly yet nonviolent and transformative revolutionary love, those who encounter King may encounter his continuing importance for the global and local. For example, racialized injustice is both global and local and requires engagement through love subsisting in justice.73 Those implicated in perpetuating racialized social sin must pay a cost in order to bring about a greater measure of justice. As Edward Schillebeeckx has argued, God does not will injustice and innocent suffering and therefore Christians must be involved in the work of social justice. At the same time, such justice must be achieved through nonviolent transformation of one's enemy into an ally and of social structures from dehumanizing to life giving. Whiteness and racialization are false anthropologies intertwined with global and local economic, political, and social structures that perpetuate and reinforce racialized denigration, inequality, and oppression. Those who benefit must allow his and her privilege to be transformed in order to benefit the victims of sin.
The sacrifices required from the privileged powerful and demanded by the disinherited in the cause of justice, however, may be radical but they will not be achieved through violence and brutality. Rather, these sacrifices must be achieved through nonviolence, through transformational love subsisting in justice. Kim's image may shock both oppressed and oppressors and draw them into the need for and the cost of true justice and reconciliation. But King's theology of revolutionary love guides and reinterprets this image away from violence, even an eschatological violence based in a kind of love, to show that justice must be achieved through nonviolent love of enemy. It is within this space that Kim's image revitalizes King's theology within a global context. King's militant nonviolence demands much from oppressed and oppressor for there is a real cost to revolution that Kim highlights through an agonized violence of love. Together, they show that the powerful will be shaken in their souls, lose influence, and have their resources reconfigured to the needs of the powerless. They must learn to love their neighbor, the one bleeding in the streets or being ground to dust by oppression-and accept the cost of doing so. The powerless must take hold of their righteous anger, their yearning for justice, and channel it into a kind of love of enemy. Their han must be addressed and resolved through love subsisting in justice.